In Three Hours
by Sailor Juno
Summary: In another sleepless night, three women in three hours try to find peace for themselves and their loved ones. Footloose oneshot.


A/N: This is a little one piece I wrote awhile ago, and the fact that I can still read it and not cringe TOO badly six months later is a good enough reason for me to post it. Enjoy.

Disclaimer: None of the characters recognized from the musical production of "Footloose" belong to me. Neither does the song 'When I Look At You', which is from the production "The Scarlet Pimpernel."  
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**In Three Hours  
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_When I look at you…  
What I always see…  
Is the face of someone else who once belonged to me.  
Still, I can hear him laugh  
And even though that melody plays on…  
He's gone. _

It is two in the morning, and Ethel can't sleep.

She shifts uncomfortably in the bed—the bed for one—in the guest room of her sister's home. She hasn't slept well since she came to Bomont. She supposes that it is the night air—clean, unlike the smog of Chicago—or the stillness of the house, when she is used to constant sounds and motion lulling her to sleep. Here, only the soft wind blows the white curtains, creating ghosts that flicker across the room and her mind.

…She is a good liar, even to herself.

Of course, she knows that she hasn't sleep well since Frank stopped coming home from work, when he would be gone for days in at a time without so much as a phone call to let his wife know that he wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere.

And she would take to wandering the apartment aimlessly, worried that he had run off and she would never hear from him again. And it proved that eventually, she was right.

Oh, he didn't simply leave and never come back. No, he gave her the courtesy of coming home one night to pack his nights and inform her that he had already filled out divorce papers, and expected her to sign them as soon as possible.

They would have arguments that would shake the room, that would wake up their son and leave him in tears even when he was old enough that he would hide them at all costs, afraid of being seen as unmanly. They would scream until their throats were so sore that they could yell no more, and then Ethel would throw some blankets out of their bedroom so he could set up camp on the couch, and slam the door angrily behind her.

They had been young when they had gotten married. Too young, he had said. They had been too young to settle down, too young to start a family, too young to grow up. She was holding him back, he accused her. He would never be all he could be because of her. Because of them, because of their family.

But that day, she had merely stood in silence in the doorway of their bedroom as he hastily shoved the contents of his dresser into a suitcase. Occasionally he would glance over his shoulder at her, perhaps expecting her to plead with him to stop, or at least to yell at him for just crumbling his clothes into his suitcase, instead of folding them neatly. She had made similar complaints in the past, when they would go on vacation, griping that she ironed everything before they left and now it would all have to be ironed again.

How silly those complaints seemed now, when she faced a marriage that was completely ruined. After almost eighteen years, of which the first fifteen had been pleasant, he had decided that she was no longer worth the effort. She _was _the rumpled shirt that he didn't care to iron again.

"Well, say something, why don't you?" he had grumbled, snapping the suitcase closed.

"What is there to say?" she had replied coldly, crossing her arms, closing herself off to him. It was not an unfamiliar gesture. "You aren't taking Ren," she had told him, as the thought of her husband leaving with not only her dignity, but also her son, entered her mind.

"I didn't plan on it," he had muttered, lifting his suitcase off the bed.

Of course he hadn't.

And then he had been gone, and she had not heard from his since. Only from his lawyer, who let her know that Frank didn't plan on fighting her on anything—the apartment and it's contents, including their son, were hers.

But the child-support checks never came from him, and Ren wanted to know why his father wanted nothing to do with him. And Ethel simply could not take care of Ren the way she did before and hold a steady job. Time and time again an old man would give her a sympathetic look and her last paycheck, telling her that she simply was not performing up to the quality that their company expected.

And as the bills piled up, Ethel had only one choice. Her pride had to take a backseat—she was responsible to make sure that Ren would have a roof over his head and food to eat and clothes to wear.

Now she tosses and turns in the bed in the room her sister had been kind enough to provide for her for as long as she needed, and she is alone.

She is simply not used to being alone.

Sometimes, she can still smell his scent on articles of clothing…he left his favorite shirt, a simple oversight, and sometimes she wears it to sleep. She wonders where they went wrong, really. In the beginning, they had been so much in love. Really, it had been only the last three years that were bad.

And she wonders how a marriage can be so wonderful for so long, and then crumble beneath her feet so fast.

_When I look at you…  
He is standing there  
I can almost breathe him in like summer in the air!  
Why do you smile his smile?  
That heaven I'd forgotten is history…  
In you…  
If you could look at me once more…  
With all the love you felt before…  
If you and I could only disappear into the past  
And find that love we knew  
I'd never take my eyes off of you!_

It is three in the morning, and Vi can't sleep.

She sits in the chair across from her bed, watching her husband thrash in his sleep. A forgotten piece of embroidery sits in her lap; her hands lay idle atop it. She can almost see the invisible wall between them, and in the dark calmness of her room, she feels even more alone than she did the night the grim-faced policemen came to tell her that her son was dead.

Before then, Shaw would smile at every opportunity. God had blessed him with health and love and family, and he was a content man.

Things are different now. But still, Shaw carries on and Vi knows that he is determined to save the town, since he could not save his son. He is a warrior for God.

_Behind every warrior is a man… _

But he never smiles anymore. Not for her. Not for their daughter. Not for anyone, or anything.

Carefully, Vi sets her embroidery on the bureau. It is the piece that she brings out on her sleepless nights, and only on her sleepless nights. But she finds that she can only finish a few stitches a night, before her mind wanders and her fears threaten to consume her.

Vi is afraid.

During the day she keeps her face calmly composed, as though nothing in her world has been shaken. Her daughter needs her to be her rock and her soft place to land when she finds her way home from her rebellion against her father. And though he would never admit it, Shaw needs her to be his rock, too.

He forgets, sometimes, that Bobby was her son, too.

…_and behind every man is a woman…_

Vi has lived in Bomont all of her life. She and Shaw had had an innocent relationship throughout the latter part of high school, and while he was studying to become a minister. And after he had been ordained, they had wed. They had lived a simple life, caring for the community, raising their two children, a life of love and high spirits.

But with Bobby's death, a piece of Shaw had died, and their lives will never be the same again.

…a piece of Vi is dead, too.

When Shaw looks at her, it isn't the way he used to look at her. And she wishes she knew how she could change that…make it so he would look at her with the love he had held for her in the past.

Can love just whither and die away?

"What is it that is haunting you?" she demands of the silent figure, her voice a whisper, as to not wake him. She is not sure she is ready for his answers, and so only asks her questions to the night. "Will you let me inside…I know that you're hiding."

Silence. But of course, she expects nothing else. "I'm here for you," she affirms.

In case in the midst of his nightmares, he forgets.

Vi opens the third drawer of her bureau, placing the embroidery inside, next to a picture of a grinning boy holding up a string with a fish attached. The boy is missing a tooth, and a man with joy radiating from his face is standing at his side, his hand proudly on the boy's shoulder.

It hurts to look at this picture, and so Vi keeps it in the drawer, where no one will find it.

But in her waking nightmares, she…she always finds it.

Time heals all wounds, it's true. But the wound becomes a scab, and eventually the scab becomes a scar. And when Vi looks at the picture, the scar stretches, and she feels a bit of that old pain, the pain she has tried so hard to push aside for the sake of her family and her sanity. It is so easy to drown in sorrow.

Because she has lost not only her son, but her husband as well. The man in the photo is not the man in the bed.

Carefully and silently Vi wipes away the few tears that have dared to trail down her cheek. She cannot cry, she cannot fall apart. She is the community, whether she likes it or not, and she must be her husband's rock. It is what she promised in her marriage vows, over twenty years ago, and she intends to stand by what she said that day at the altar.

If she had known…

But before she crawls back in bed and tries yet again in vain to fall asleep, she turns to the figure on the bed once more. "_I _need you, too," she whispers passionately.

And so she climbs back in bed, knowing that if by some chance she manages to fall asleep, the nightmare will come once again.

It always does.

_When I look at you,  
He is touching me…  
I would reach for him, but who can hold a memory?  
And love isn't everything…  
That moonlight on the bed will melt away…  
Someday!  
Oh, you were once that someone  
That I followed like a star  
Then suddenly, you changed…  
And now I don't know who you are!  
…Or could it be…  
That I never really knew you from the start?  
Did I create a dream?  
Was he a fantasy?  
Even a memory is paradise for all the **fools** like me!_

It is four in the morning, and Lulu can't sleep.

She sits at her kitchen table, mindlessly stirring a cup of coffee. It seems pointless to try and fall asleep by now, and so she had resigned herself to trying to revive herself. She will need her energy for the trials in the day ahead. What they will be, she doesn't know. But she knows they will come.

Upstairs are her sister, her nephew, and her husband, and she cannot help but relish the temporary silence that has taken over her home.

When they are all awake, there is never silence.

She had never imagined things would be this way when she had insisted that Ethel move down to Bomont and stay with her, at least until Ren graduated from high school. She had looked forward to it for weeks, a chance to reunite and rekindle the deep friendship she had had with her sister that time and six hundred miles had begun to wear away at.

But now everything is falling down around her.

When morning comes, she knows that things will fall back into the normal routine. Angry words will be exchanged. Between Ren and Wes, between Wes and Ethel, between Ethel and herself, and between her and Wes. Accusations, threats, and tears would fall from their lips and eyes.

But perhaps worse than the fighting is the silence. The cold silence that speaks more than any hurtful words possibly could. When her husband leaves for work without a word to anyone in the house, Lulu tries to remember how it was before Ren took it into his head to change the town he had just come to.

It frightens her when she can't remember.

She can remember, however, every word that she and Wes had hurled at one another that terrible night last week, when he had been so angry she had wondered for a moment if he might hit her. Instead he had slammed the door to their bedroom and left, and was gone for the rest of the night, returning the next day after work without a single word.

She had gone to Ethel's room, meekly, as though she were still a child, and had curled up in her sister's bed and cried into her shoulder, the arguments between the sisters forgotten for the time being.

At first Lulu had discarded the arguments in the house as mere adjustment issues. She and Wes don't have any children. They don't know how to be parental figures. Of course, it is easier on Lulu…Ethel is right there. But Ren's father is gone, and suddenly Wes is asked to father a 17-year-old boy who wants nothing to do with his uncle's attempts to be an authority figure.

"_Now listen, Ren…I know I'm not your father, but—" _

"You can say that again!"

That night Ethel had come to her and said that if Lulu could not keep her husband under control, then Ethel and Ren would go find somewhere else to live. That, of course, had escalated into another violent argument.

"_What do you know about being a parent?_"

Lulu places her coffee cup down and rests her head on her palm, squeezing her eyes shut. The caffeine, so early in the morning, is giving her a headache. Or perhaps it is just the memories.

She had always wanted children, but it seemed that God had had different plans for her. There had been one miscarriage in a thirteen year marriage, and then no other pregnancies. And now, at thirty-six, she has accepted the fact that she will not be a mother. And her sister is right—she does not know how to parent a child.

She worries that her family will fall apart around her, and she will be left to try and pick up the pieces.

She worries that she will be forced to chose between her sister and her husband. She worries that at the end of this whole mess, there will be no way that both her relationship with her sister and her marriage will be able to survive intact. She worries she will have to sacrifice one to save the other.

And as painful and heartbreaking as it would be, she knows what she would chose.

She has been married for over thirteen years. But she has been a sister for thirty-six years.

She places the coffee cup in the sink and gets down, right on the kitchen floor.

And she prays. _  
_

…_Now remembering…  
Is all that I can do…  
Because I miss him so…  
When I look at you…_

It is five in the morning, and the sun is rising, and three women have survived yet another sleepless night.  
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